Review: Get Blessed!

Áine Reilly is a funeral celebrant and she’s here to teach you how to be one too. Taking the form of an interactive course complete with PowerPoint, biscuits, and felt tip pens, this Fringe debut from Irish writer and comic Niamh Denyer flies by in an hour of silliness and laughs.

Reilly is a well-realised character, with money-grabbing cynic meeting Irish archetype to great effect, and Denyer an able actor and comic. She banters easily with the audience over a well-paced hour, never breaking character. Her quick-witted retorts raise as many laughs as the scripted material.

Get Blessed! pokes fun at traditional funerals, competitive celebrants, Catholic ritual and the audience’s participation, but mostly at Reilly herself. Despite the show’s funereal subject matter, there is no darkness here, just fun and games. In the 1pm slot, it’s a light-hearted way to start a Fringe afternoon with plenty of laughs and even some colouring in. 

The success of Get Blessed! relies on an audience comfortable and enthusiastic enough to participate fully in the ‘course’s’ activities, which might seem a risk for a Fringe debut. In the hands of a performer as deft as Denyer, though, it’s difficult for them to be anything else.